My work is driven by images and the theoretical exchange between materiality and concept. Concepts of desire are complex, and that complexity is a recurring theme in my work that influences my choice of form and material. Beauty is contradictory in an ever-changing landscape of western ideals. Our capitalist, consumptive culture forces us into perilous, conflicting states of identity, judgement and acceptance. Common themes run through my work in the search for the discovery of the self, such as the female body in the form of self-portraiture, the idea of the gaze and voyeur. I choose to explore the human form for its aesthetic qualities, yes, but also to question elements of time, aging, beauty and desire.

As Georges Bataille so eloquently puts it,

“To look at an object with desire is to appropriate it, to enjoy it. To desire is to pollute; to desire is to take.”

#cleanseinstall

#cleanseinstall is an ongoing project that asks the public to participate in the installation with me as collaborators. Each soap cleanses, changes, and dissolves. I ask the public to take these female figures into the world and explore how they change, where they go, how they transform, and document these changes on social media. The figure is a self-portrait, and participants are essentially collaborators, not only by sharing images, but by interacting with a piece of me indirectly. What I see in these pieces is a reminder that change is inevitable. Our bodies are not really our own in these turbulent times, and, ultimately, we are all so very small. My hope is that viewers will engage in conversation about the ephemeral nature of the body itself, and share their own thoughts on consumption, beauty, and change, no matter how contradictory they may seem. All images are created by individuals other than myself and posted on social media. The video below is a compilation of some of those images.

#cleanseinstall

Heautoscopic Jaunt

Sculpting with white chocolate, a substance so creamy, so sweet, and yet, not really chocolate, this thing I/we desire, it is false. Too sweet, too…something. Here my body is desirable and overwhelmingly undesirable at the same time, something that is unattainable, digestible and indigestible, ambiguous. Reality. Unreality. In what some scholars called in an almost mythical era, this feeling was known as heautoscopy. Seeing oneself from a distance, out of the body. Double.

Expired chocolate donated by Sarris Candies in Canonsburg PA

Heather Joy Puskarich Heautoscopic Jaunt

Solid cast and sculpted white chocolate

Avalon

Avalon

Av·a·lon \ ˈa-və-ˌlän \

Literally meaning the isle of apples and referencing the isle of the dead. This photographic representation, later translated to the glass tiles, is meant to create a seductive, yet melancholic investigation of lightness and darkness.

Recycled glass and fusible film 36”x48”

Avalon

Avalon

Avarice Awaken

Avarice Awaken

Part of the Series of Seven, this piece is in reference and reverence to my sisters. The three pomegranates represent my living sisters and they rest on the memory of one lost. The glasses are filled with black oil, for the things you want, water, the things you need, and clay to keep one grounded. Over the course of the show, the fruit aged, the clay settled, water evaporated, and the oil developed a film. As in life and death, the piece ages, changes and ultimately becomes undesirable.

Nemesis Identity

A sampling of the Nemesis project. Archival pigment prints 22”x48”

Part of a year long exploration photographing the eye when arriving in the studio and departing the studio daily. Investigation of changing identity, mood and personality throughout the day.

John Riegert

John Riegert

9/22/68-11/15/18

“When I’m happy, I’ll draw the sunshine”. John Riegert

Commissioned along with 250 other Pittsburgh artists to capture the essence of John Riegert in portrait form for the venue Space. I chose to create a gif of John’s eyes and then make an edible antipasti platter with them. Viewers consumed him throughout the opening and the the plate was left to change over the course of the show. After all, as artists are we often consumed by our viewers, patrons, families and the world around us in one form or another?

Dusk

Nemesis

Archival pigment prints, ink, steel, glass

nonlinear timeline. A history of the self through images, preservation through photograph and reflection. To self reflect is pain, and time is illusive.